JF Ptak Science Books

A Quiet Masterpiece on the Zipper, and Why it is Better to Repair a Zipper than Blow Up a Tree Stump

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 229

This is an example of a quiet, naive masterpiece, and is a perfect companion to a fantastic pamphlet that I wrote about earlier this month on flagpole painting. This tall (11x8 inch) 35-page 1945 work with an impossible title has everything that you would need to know--as its title promises and delivers--to repair a zipper.  Not replace a zipper--repair it.  It is so beautiful as to want to make every engineer residing in the deepness of everyones' soul just simply weep.  The pamphlet is simply but well illustrated and addresses 50-odd contingencies for zipper malfunction and failure, and speaks to a particular WWII mindset that that addresses problems in this very fashion. Repair rather than replace.  The bottom line here is that this is as good as any book of the history of fluxions or the making of the atomic bomb or cooking up a virus, given the parameters and limitations of its subject. 

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(I have a pamphlet somewhere that was published by Dupont that would've been a great cross-purpose reference, only I cannot find it. It was called Stump Blasting.  And, yes, since it was published by the DuPont Chemical Corporation it heavily sold the idea to farmers of how useful dynamite can be for just about any job.  And I don't disagree outright, but the approach to the philosophies of problem-solving couldn't be more different, especially contrasting the Stump Blasting pamphlet with the Stump Removal one produced by a chain manufacturer. 

And so how does it come to pass that someone ostensibly trying to write a history of science blog that has been changed to a history of ideas blog finds himself at almost-midnight on a Sunday plugging away on a post about zipper repair and stump blasting?  (And how often to do those five words come together in a sentence? ) Simple:  its about the methodology and the approach to figuring out a problem.  On the one hand, you have a circumstance where the problem is addressed, solved and eradicated; on the other, the problem is simply eradicated without the "solved" part.  (Zippers really shouldn't fail all that often--the guy who patented the modern zipper in 1906 said that the zipper should work 200,000 times.) Personally I think that it is better in the long run to solve the problem rather than just replace it or blow it up. Perhaps we're just living in a BIU ("blow it up") kind of world, but I think we could use more zipper-repair approaches to thinking.

Atomic Bomb Exposure Effects on Pregnancy at Hiroshima and Nagasaki

JF Ptak Science Books Post 228

The total number of casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki today exceed the initial figures of  1945--people were of course dying years after the blasts due to excessive exposure to ionizing radiation and other complications.  To understand the long-term affects of the use of these weapons the  National Academy of Science (under the instigation of the Truman White House) created the Atomic Bomb Casualty Committee in 1945.  Its earliest concerns were hematological, but then quickly spread into other areas such as leukemia, radiation cataracts, fertility, aging, mortality and genetics.  By 1950 there were more than 1000 Americans involved in this program, which had begun to whither by 1953 but which lasted until 1982.

This questionnaire comes from the ABCC and published in The Effect of Exposure to the Atomic Bombs on Pregnancy Termination in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the prolific and important Neel and Schull) and published by the Academy in 1956. (The two would address the issue many times, and seem to have summed it up in The Children of Atomic Bomb Survivors, A Genetic Study.  Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1991. The 1947 report of the ABCC may be read HERE.)

This study addressed the question of generational radiation damage and--after 1953--whether and if so how radiation damages DNA.  The issue was whether future generations of children would express increased birth defect ratios as a result of exposure to the bomb.  This questionnaire was given every fifth lunar month to the pregnant women of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--who were made to register their pregnancies with the government--and carried on for six years.   

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Also see the following:

Liebow, Averill.  Encounter with Disaster, A Medical Diary. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1970.

Marston, Robert Q. M.D., and Fredric Solomon M.D., eds.  The Medical Implications of Nuclear War.  Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986.

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The figures for the dead and injured at Hiroshima and Nagaski, August 1945:

	Hiroshima	Nagasaki
Pre-raid population	255,000	195,000
Dead	66,000	39,000
Injured	69,000	25,000
Total Casualties	135,000	64,000

(Click on image to enlarge)

  

Garbage (Trash) (Dust)) Can Advertisement, 1911

JF Ptak Science Books Post 227

[Update: as of May 2015 this is still the only time I've seen a 100+ year-old advertisement for a trash can.]

In the many years of dealing with unusual publications and images and illustrations and such, I do not recall ever seeing an advertisement for a waste can.  And so today, here at the tail end of the summer of 2008, I stumbled upon one, tucked away in the back of the Official Catalogue and Guide of the Ohio Valley Exposition of Cincinnati, 1910.   (Actually I was browsing the ads in the pamphlet when I saw the eye-popping half-page ad for The Weir Frog Company.  It took as few moments for me to realize that they were selling railway frogs and other major-heavy hardware, but the thought of the frog farm did linger a bit...) I cannot say that trashcan tech had improved sharply between 1911 and now.  I can say that the advertisers used an awful lot of exclamatory arrows to make their point, which leads me to perhaps a wrong assumption that this trash can was cutting edge.  Or perhaps not; after all, how much can one say about it?  (Yes, there's the patents for bomb-proof, smokeless, half-vented, lid-tethered, wheeled, semi-wheeled, clip-lidded and etc. garbage cans--actually I can count thousands of patents award to and about garbage cans.  But, basically, its pretty much the same.) See the wonderful Timeline of Garbage here.

Maps as Propaganda: the Turning of the Tide, January 1943

JF Ptak Science Books  Post  226

I've made a number of posts about Nazi propaganda maps and thought that this was perhaps time to surface something that represented an Allied effort in the use of maps in hearts & minds campaigns--in this case it was in French obviously and distributed in occupied France.  . (Note:as is the case with may of the items that I feature on this blog, the following pamphlet comes from a collection that I bought of the Library of Congress.  It was called, simply, "The Pamphlet Collection and was 90,000 items strong.  Or weak..  There was no real organizing principle save for the fact that they were all categorized in some strange way and housed in 2,400 alphabetically-arranged document boxes.  They also hadn't been touched since about 1948.  What makes the "collection" so spectacular to me is that the majority of the pamphlets in it just don't show up in any collections, anywhere. It seems natural to surface these things and publish them to the web where they can be either appreciated or forgotten--but at least they'll still be available for as long as electrons move). 

The occasion for the publication was the meeting at the Anfa Hotel in January 1943 in Casablanca (in the French Protectorate of Morocco) between Churchill, Roosevelt and De Gaulle (Stalin deciding he was too busy with the Nazi invasion to attend.  The full trio of the Americans, British and Russians would meet later in November at Teheran). The Casablanca Conference mapped out the Allied strategy for the rest of the war while trying to figure out how to help the Soviets. The map blatantly relates the closing of the collar around the shrinking neck of the Nazi nation, especially with what was seen as the impending defeat of the German forces in Russia. I suspect that the pamphlet was really published after the massive surrender of German troops at Stalingrad at the end of January--this would explain the forward motion of the red flags. The pamphlet cover calls now for the unconditional surrender of the German forces called for in Casablanca.  The text explains to the French reader that the downward spiral and defeat of Germany was inevitable, and that nothing less than complete and unconditional surrender would be acceptable. In any event the images and the map were completely understandable, even without language, calling quick and immediate attention to the new and true and positive developments in the war.

 

 

Book Design--The Weight of Humanity on Book Covers

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 225

I don't often see covers of pamphlets featuring hundreds--or thousands--of people as a part of the design.  In my continuing role as finder and re-finder of things found I have re-surfaced four of these designs, and I feel I should post them before they're captured in the un-finding process.  Again. Back to the design:  these are very striking, persuasive images, unavoidable in many ways, completely intriguing, beguiling.  People just have to look at these things.  Look:  I made a little experiment today placing ten  very interestingly-designed pamphlets on display, all with compelling and distinct merits, and including one with a big spread of humanity on the cover (the "Life" pamphlet. The very unscientific results is that people were generally first drawn to the complex people image, and stayed longer looking at it--by far--than any other image.  Perhaps its the same sort of reaction going on when you watch people walking in front of a mirror or reflective surface, with the vast majority of folks checking themselves out in it.  Maybe its just people looking for something familiar.  Maybe the faces are simply, strictly more interesting than just points o the page.  I'm not sure. 

The first image is Life, the story of the fraternity lamda chi alpha, published around 1935; second, a one penny Labour Party publication coming from the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, published in London in 1937; third, a program for the Liberal Party, published in London in c. 1938; lastly, fourth, a program for some course of semi-statistical study with the John Hancock life insurance company.  These beautiful designs were much more interesting than the very casual contents they covered. 

     

 

Atomic Bomb--Historic American Building Survey, Trinity Site

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 224

I just came across these engineering drawings for a detailed survey of the Trinity Site in New Mexico,  location of the first detonation of an atomic bomb (16 July 1945).  The work was completed by Rossana Santos for the DARCOM Recording Project as part of the American Historic Building Survey (Historic American Engineering Record NM-1-B, Department of the Interior).  There are a number of interesting renderings, but the most useful (and scarcest) is the map showing the location of bunkers and instrumentation for the 16 July event. (Click on the images to enlarge.)  This series of drawings pretty much speak for themselves. 

 

Chemical Warfare Architecture: Dugway Proving Ground's German and Japanese Villages

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 223

Dugway Provong Grounds (DPG) was selected in 1943 to test all manner of toxic agents and their antidotes, chemical dispersal systems and the nasty chemical that they would spray, the horrendous and effective (and new-ish) flamethrower and other allied bits. It was established way up in the northwest corner of Utah, in the Great Desert Basin and part of the Bonneville Salt Flats—a very tough, isolated, severe environment for being in the continental U.S., sitting where the waters of the freshwater  Pleistocene  Lake Bonneville used to lap up.  It was at Granite Peak in  DPG that biological warfare weapons were tested until that aspect of research was phased out at the end of the war in August 1946, which is the origin for these architectural plans for test combatant towns.  It seems to me that these buildings were built for offensive purposes for the chemical warfare division, and primarily (?) concerned with the effects of different sorts of incendiaries against typical German and Japanese structures.  i'm not sure that I've seen these images before. 

DPG continues today to research chemical dispersal and micro environments, as well as toxins, pathogens and chemical agents; it also tests the reliability and survivability of military hardware subjected to biological and chemical attack—it is still a major facility and still does very major stuff.  DPG is also a bizarre grail of some sort for the UFO people. 

 

Graffiti and Prison Technology ca. 1800

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 222

Here's a compelling vignette on two sides of the same door.  It comes in two images from the Historic American Building Survey and are of the  Old Jail (built in 1690 and located on State Route 6A & Old Jail Lane) of Barnstable, Massachusetts.  What is so shocking to me is the graffiti of an American schooner picking its way through a sea of tapered nails on the bad side of the door.  It is just heartbreaking (if you can remove from your mind whatever offense this fellow was in jail for) to think of someone scratching away at something this personal on what looks like massive, first-growth, very hard hardwood:  and certainly within smelling distance of the water. 

Seeing the picture below gives a better idea of the primitive weight of the door and the impossibility of getting away from what seemed essentially to be a windowless room of tight two-inch thick hardwood.  If you've ever been in an old New England barn in June you would have found that the place could still be cold inside--and not a simple cold, either, but a bone-breaking cold.. This jail must've been pretty inhospitable in the winter, what with the wet windy northers and the frozen mist coming in from Barnstable Harbor.  It just plain wouldn't have been good.

The other--good--side of the door, and the better place to be, if you had to be in that building:

Blank and Missing People and Things Part 10: Fat Embarassment

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 221

The newest entry in the continuing series of Blank and Missing Things and People  is an odd, removed little pamphlet by a former wrestling champion on the attack on unwanted flesh.  (I've come across this unusual phrase a number of times now:  "unwanted flesh", doesn't exactly roll off the tongue...)  It was published in 1933 and tried to convince its readers that one can "never be too fat to reduce".  It certainly singles out married women as a new and lucrative market:  "most fat women are married and of middle age and the latest and most approved method of taking flesh off the human form is by means of well regulated physical culture exercise..."   He states:  "the plump woman is out of style".  In any event I was attracted to the pamphlet for its culture and the two faceless men waiting for an identity...

Nazi Propaganda: Scare Tactics in a Hearts and Minds Campaign, 1940

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 220

The Nazi propaganda office published this effort (printed in August 1940) with every intent of making it seem as though it was produced in the U.K. as a sober reconsideration of fighting against the Germans, casting much of the argument in terms of economics. It was a relatively soft-sell effort in a hearts-and-minds campaign, hitting its target audience with reminders of how alone everyone on the British Isles were in the hard summer of 1940. 
                                                               

 

These two maps compare the economic and trade situation of 1914 and 1939, from the Nazi perspective.  In 1914, the British, "as a preliminary condition for the success of the hunger-Blockade, only achieved, however after four years if struggle during which Britain was to sustain heavy losses".   They announce with exclamation (!) that for 1939 there was:

"a totally different situation! The encirclement of Germany miscarries, leaving way for the expansion of Germany, and the way for her trade with neutral countries, especially with the Balkans and Russia...thus is the blockade against Germany a hopeless enterprise".   

The Nazis' state that "Britain...energetically refuses to admit the hopelessness of her winning this trade war and tenaciously grasps upon all kinds of unfounded rumours...", all the while refusing to discus the bombing of Britain or any other aspect of military war

                                                                                                                                                           After a dozen pages of making the case against the British position in being able to take care of itself, there is this folding quantitative display, making a diametrical-pictorial presentation of the British failings.  The Nazis show that they overpower the British in the ability to supply itself with grain, flour, meat, cooking fat, cheese, eggs, sugar and vegetables--in every area, in fact, except for fish. 

This is the summation of the pamphlet, the last paragraph, asking the Brits to just give it up and quit their fight. 

Opium Warehouses, 1851

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 219

In general, when looking at these two images we know that we are looking at ALOT of something; when that "something" is opium, it just seems like a whole lot more.  And this whole lot more is exactly that, drawn by Walter S. Sherwill (a Bengal Army Revenue Surveyor, 1815-1890, and published by The Scientific American on 29 July 1882)--these are the warehouses at the Patna opium factory in Bengal as they were in 1851. (The original drawings were published as Illustrations of the Mode of Preparing the Indian  Opium Intended for the Chinese Market, published by J. Madden in London.)  And that would be the government-controlled warehouses for the state crop, showing some of the 12,000,000 pounds of "poppy juice"  produced yearly in that district, this part intended for the captive Chinese audience, which brought to that country war(s), peonage, a ruined economy and  vast addiction.                                                                                          

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"Irreplaceables" of Industry: the Grindstone, 1866

JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 218

When we think today of irreplaceable aspects of technical society electricity and petroleum loom large as the juice of progress.  These "irreplaceables" have hanged greatly over time, with perhaps one of the most benign being the simple grindstone.  These images (below) from The Scientific American of 7 April 1866 show work at the quarry of F.M. Stearns & Co. of Cuyahuga County, Ohio (near Cleveland), and located n the Cleveland, Columbus & Cincinnati Railroad.  These round disks were cut out of the earth here in 2 foot and 200 foot (long) sections which were 6 inches and 6 feet thick.  The grindstone was an absolute necessity in just about every corner of commerce, almost all of which is gone or replaced, today. What really gave me pause wasn't the image of the quarrying of the stones or the cutting of their eyes or their shaping--it was the packaging.  How awesome is it to think of packing up ten 400-pounders into a wooden barrel?  A barrel full of grindstones, one after the other, filling a railway car, with car after call of them, sending them out into the country in their dense inertness. I can just about smell the Progress in those cars.
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Empty and Missing Things 9: the Skeleton of the Statue of Liberty

JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 217

In the continuing thread of Empty and Blank and Missing People we find perhaps the largest and heaviest of all Blank People--the superstructure of the Statue of Liberty.  This woodcut appeared in the 13 June 1885 issue of The Scientific American, and shows the empty nest for Auguste Bartholdi's "Liberty Enlightening the World".  For an empty thing it weighed quite a lot, over 400,000 pounds of iron plate and the awaited repousse copper skin.  It was the tallest free-standing statue in history, but since (and only recently) has been eclipsed (see below for a short list of the tallest modern statues). 

Longest Rivers in the World--the top 95 in miles

JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 216

Well, all I needed was a list of the lengths of 50 or so of the major rivers int he world, and I just couldn't come up with one easily, so I threw this together this very simple list of the top 95 rivers by length.  The ironic point here is that I own quite a number of antiquarian maps which beautifully display this data--I just couldn't find the data in a digital/manipulable form. It would be nice to have the areas drained by each and some other factors, but this is all I needed for the map store, and so I'll share it here.  There are two lists below, the first listing the rivers by length and the second listing them alphabetically. 

By Length (River Name, Continent, Length in Miles)

Nile Africa 4132       
Amazon South America 3900      
Yangtze Asia 3430      
Hwang Ho Asia 2093      
Congo Africa 2900      
Amur Asia 2802      
Lena Asia 2653      
Mackenzie North America 2635      
Mekong Asia 2600      
Niger Africa 2590      
Yenisey Asia 2565      
Missouri North America 2466      
Parana South America 2450      
Mississippi North America 2330      
Irtish Asia 2300      
La Plata Paraguay South America 2300      
Volga Europe 2293      
Ob Asia 2260      
Madeira South America 2060      
Indus Asia 1980      
Purus South America 1900      
St. Lawrence North America 1900      
Rio Grande North America 1885      
Brahmaputra Asia 1800      
Orinoco South America 1800      
Sao Francisco South America 1800      
Yukon North America 1800      
Danube Europe 1770      
Darling Australia 1750      
Salween Asia 1730      
Euphrates Asia 1675      
Syr Darya Asia 1653      
Zambezi Africa
Tocantins South America 1640      
Araguaia South America 1630      
Amu Darya Asia 1628      
Kolyma Asia 1615      
Murray Australia 1600      
Angara Asia 1550      
Ganges Asia 1550      
Pilcomayo South America 1550      
Ural Asia 1522      
Vilyuy Asia 1513      
Arkansas North America 1450      
Colorado North America 1450      
Irrawaddy Asia 1425      
Dnieper Europe 1420      
Aldan Asia 1392      
Negro South America 1305      
Paraguay South America 1290      
Kama Europe 1261      
Xingu South America 1230      
Don Europe 1224      
Ucayali South America 1220      
Columbia North America 1214      
Saskatchewan North America 1205      
Jurua South America 1200      
Peace North America 1195      
Orange Africa 1155      
Tigris Asia 1150      
Pechora Europe 1118      
Dvina Europe 1100      
Tobol Asia 1093      
Snake North America 1038      
Uruguay South America 1025      
Red North America 1018      
Churchill North America 1000      
Maranon South America 1000      
Ohio North America 981      
Magdelna South America 950      
Roosevelt South America 950      
Godavari Asia 930      
Si Asia 930      
Oka Europe 920      
Canadian North America 906      
Dnestr Europe 876      
Brazos North America 870      
Salado South America 870      
Fraser North America 850      
Parnaiba South America 850      
Colorado North America 840      
Rhine Europe 820      
Narbada Asia 800      
Athabasca North America 765      
Donets Europe 735      
Pecos North America 735      
Green North America 730      
Elbe Europe 720      
James North America 710      
Ottawa North America 696      
White North America 690      
Cumberland North America 687      
Gambia Africa 680      
Yellowstone North America 671      
Tennessee North America 652 

How to use the Atomic Bomb: Revisitng the Chicago Metal Lab Poll, 1945--Results of 2000+ responses

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 215

HOW TO USE THE BOMB Poll, 1945--Results

The results so far (August 23, 2008) from our Post re-offering the Chicago Metallurgical Lab's poll of July 1945 shows the results from 1945 and 2008 to be quite similar.  Check the results for this day HERE.

Overall the results are fairly similar—of course there were no controls in the 2008 poll, and it was taken by more than just the scientists at Chicago who helped build the bomb in 1945, and of course people were asked to try and place themselves with some judiciousness back into 1945.  So the results are necessarily problematic.  Even so, I’m not sure right now how to interpret them.

The result with the greatest difference between 1945 and now was option#1—drop the bomb, drop it now, and drop it on a military target.  There were almost twice the percentage of people in ’08 who chose this than in 1945.  I’m not sure if I’m surprised by this or not—people today certainly know and probably could not put out f their mind that the Japanese didn’t surrender until days after the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb.  Wouldn’t this mean that more people would think to drop it?

The second option, which frankly I thought would be the overwhelming choice in ’08 (the demonstration of the effectiveness of the bomb), increased somewhat by 25% to 46%.  I was thinking that this number would increase to 75%.  I would guess, though, that if the general public was given this poll (somehow) in 1945, that the overwhelming response would be option #1. After all there were millions of Americans in uniform and the threat of the invasion of Japan was tremendous.  My suspicion is that this number would be gigantic, 90% or something like that, because by this point the country was swimming in reports of terror and blood and death, and that the chance of ending it all in one or two steps would have been almost completely irresistible   remember:  no major decision-maker in the U.S. government had any reservations about the military use of the bomb.  There were private reservations on the use of the bomb among America’s top military men (Eisenhower, for one), but these men would not make the ultimate decision.
This is a curious result that I need to think about some more.

The results as of 23 August 2008:

2008 poll takers=  2082 people.
1945 poll takers=    150 people

1. Use them in the manner that is from the military point of view most effective in bringing about prompt Japanese surrender at minimum human cost to our armed forces:  26%   (1945=15%)

2. Give a military demonstration in Japan to be followed by renewed opportunity for surrender before full use of the weapon is employed  .  37%  (1945=46%)

3. Give an experimental demonstration in this country, with representatives of Japan present; followed by a new opportunity for surrender before full use of the weapon is employed.  23%  (1945=26%)

4. Withhold military use of the weapons, but make public experimental demonstration of their effectiveness. 10%  (1945=11%)

5. Maintain as secret as possible all developments of our new weapons and refrain from using them in this war.  5%  (1945=2%)